4 Man team, ladder reset (practice) weekend!

[Archone]

I had a great weekend!
And I hope the few who reads this, also had one!

I had some old pals over for dinner friday night, which led to a 14 hour straight playthrough! Of diablo 2 ofc! :jig:
By saturday evening, we had 4 characters at lvl 88-89!

I wanted to share this with you, because of several things.

1. I love ladder reset practice!! When I get bored of the ladder after ~3months, I tend to Singleplayer or this!
2. I have many nice ways to effeciantly start the ladder, when it comes to teams.
3. This is a new, for me, way to go!


Ill make this short, and want all your opinions! Just spill them! Always room for improvement!


First char.
Necromancer with summons. This is the base structure early on:

6p raise skeleton. (= 4 skeletons)
10p skel mastery.
5p Clay Golem. (50+ % slow)
Sum Res.
Decrep.

- All by lvl 24.


The supporting characters were all Paladins this time. (Boring, but it worked so well)

Paladin 1, focused on a hammerdin build. With maxed ConcAura by lvl 37.
Uses Might lvl 1 til lvl17.


Paladin 2, focused on a Zealer build. With lvl 15 Defiance aura by lvl20.
And Fanaticism by lvl 30+
Zeal lvl 4, and Holy Shield lvl 5 was focus early on. To make him a stronger kind of tank.
Less vita, but higher str and dex for heavier gear and higher block.


Paladin 3, main support character.
Maxed prayer at lvl 20.
From lvl 12, uses cleansing. (to heal 100% of the time, and no manacosts)
From lvl 24, uses Meditation ofc. And maxes it asap.
Any other spare points into Holy shield.



Summary.
The 4 skeletons I had was tanks, and did a little more dmg early on.
We played through the game, but its completing normal as fast as possible that was the theme.

Andariel was easy, just overpowering her.

Duriel was harder, we had lvl 18-19 the first time. So we leveled to 21-22 and killed him with ease.
The extra defense from gear and levels, made a huge difference.

Mephisto. No words needed. 100+ % slow with Golem and decrep.

Diablo. Easy aswell.

Baal runs werent necessary. So we continued to NM immediatly.

Other than Duriel, we had no deaths until early Hell. And the timing was 10 hours, 35 minutes. With maybe 2-3 rerunning of areas. For xp.



EDIT: Im so freaking tired right now. So this could probably be cleaned up.. Sorry about that!

 

[barbiebarb]

Nice run there. Maybe we get to do this once the ladder resets. I'll most likely play the next ladder more.

 

[Beastwand]

I would want to do one with a Summoner Necro, a Resist Lightning Paladin, Resist Cold Paladin, and Resist Fire Paladin, as well as a Conviction Paladin. You might think this will be weak and kill really slow, but with Corpse Explosion + Amplify Damage + Conviction it would probably be really easy. Though the Summoner would have to focus so much on these hmm.

I think the minions would be totally immune to all 3 elements, and your whole party and mercs will have 95% to fire/light/cold in norm/night/hell. Just throwing out ideas.

Another cool thing would be a Fanat bowadin, Conc bowadin, and Might bowadin, with 3 Rogue mercs. Maybe also a Bow Druid with Heart of Wolverine and another Rogue. Might as well have machine guns back in Diablo times. Also Amplify damage necro with bow and he could bone prison everything but that seems cheap/overpowered. Or just Summoner so the minions get the auras and take damage while everyone fires. Level 1 Amplify damage with + skills is fine.

 

[Archone]

Any build relying on items, will suck badly in terms of speed. Its not ok, imo, to be "able" to go through the game in more than 10-12 hours.

Speed is important, along with fun. Having Support characters for mainly 1 aura, is going to be boring for those players.

Thats why I wont include any idle characters in my current strat for ladder team.

 

[Beastwand]

Any build relying on items, will suck badly in terms of speed. Its not ok, imo, to be "able" to go through the game in more than 10-12 hours.

Speed is important, along with fun. Having Support characters for mainly 1 aura, is going to be boring for those players.

Thats why I wont include any idle characters in my current strat for ladder team.

Uhm if that was in response to what I wrote, it makes no sense. For one instance, my ideas weren't the least bit dependent on items. Maybe you just wrote something at random to add to your original post, I don't know.

 

[Rawness1]

The idea seems like a waste anyways. You are mostly going to meet elementals in one variety, making two of the auras ineffective when only one is required. C/E also doesnt scale well with /players. Having 3 hammerdins, 1 sanctuary/conc/salvation would be superior in every single way, then the characters can specialize in fire/lightning aura if you want that when fighting certain enemies (never have problems with cold immunities, so it feels uselesss)

The bow idea seems painfully slow & idea dependant.

 

[helvete1]

If speed is of ANY importance, then an assassin and at least one sorceress *needs* to be a part of the team. Assassin for running BoS and grabbing waypoints/put up key TPs until about act 3 normal (when sorc gets teleport), then sorceress to teleport like mad after that.

Also, some key equipment is very easily farmed from normal countess.
- "Stealth" armor (TAL+ETH) for its 25% FRW and 25%FCR. At least one needs to be made, preferrably two.
- "Leaf" staff (TIR+RAL) for its +3 fire skills. Helps assassins Wake of Fire trap which is awesome throghout normal diff. Also helps stuff like Fire Ball, but the sorc is mostly there for teleport. Respec later.
- RAL runes in general - very nice way to get fire resist, which helps with survival.

After normal, move up to NM countess and farm the runes for
- Spirit(s)
- Insight(s)
- Black (CB gets important in hell, where static can't sliver bosses anymore)
- Lore(s)
- Rhyme(s)

I think the current record for 8 player group to get untwinked from scratch to having killed hell baal is just under 2 hours and 30 minutes.